What do you want from live?
I have been unashamedly emotional about the return of live music. I was weeping at my first gig post-lockdown, the marvellous Arlo Parks at the incredible hmv Empire Coventry, actual tears. I then got an overly passionate response to Nova Twins at Godiva Festival, it felt so good to be in the presence of raucous energy and creativity.
It probably shouldn’t be a surprise. On average I’ve been at two gigs per month for the last 40 years and have earned a living (directly/indirectly) from live music for most of the last 30. Being without live music has been a wrench. At the same time, it provided an opportunity to reflect on what the live experience actually is. No amount of exclusive streamed performances or intimate shows came close to replacing it, they filled a gap but they weren’t the same.
I’m prepared to accept that this may be a generational thing. My offspring (in their 20s) can watch TV and Tik Tok simultaneously and think nothing of live tweeting stuff I think they would need to concentrate upon. Furthermore, I suspect that a streaming option should be on offer for most gigs and may be in the future, it’s potentially a solution to the carbon intensive industry of touring and opens up gigs for all – more of which in the next post.
For me though, live is live, it’s irreplaceable. There is nothing to compete with the visceral energy of a live show, the communal experience of being amongst your peers in that moment. Live is the anticipation, the expectation, the surprises and the glory of a gig, not to mention the afterglow when all you want to do is hear it again and reflect upon it with friends.
Unless you have the best technology, all the kit, streaming is simply a version of music TV, and we know how poor that can be. This is not to say that I didn’t appreciate Radiohead releasing full concert videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq19-LqvG35A-30oyAiPiqA during the pandemic, I even watched bits of Pink Floyd at Pompeii and revelled in Fontaines DC doing A Hero’s Death in Dublin. The main thing that these three had in common was high production values, which not all can afford – it favours the already famous. In real live situations, the smallest grungiest gig can give the most pleasure. Live confounds as often as it succeeds, the unpredictability is part of the package.
As live returned, so did the spectre of Abba’s animatronics – the Abbatars and their London-based ‘concert’ project. It is hard to criticise something that provides work to legions of my fellow event professionals and great musicians but I’m not sure it’s a great leap forward for music. You could argue that it’s a live experience rather than being a concert, but will it potentially take money out of the market, away from other shows? I think it might, for most of us there is only a finite amount.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that people are choosing between Abba and Amyl and the Sniffers but people already go to too few shows. The bulk of concert goers are attending one to two per year. It is bad enough that, thanks to streaming, the recordings of new artists already compete with all the greatest bands that ever recorded – to bring that to the live market feels selfish. Is it live or a digitised facsimile of the live experience with no glitches, string breaks or surprises and where all the solos are perfect? We need to fight for live like never before – it’s too precious to risk losing it all again.
